Statement on Simony
The Catholic Church prohibits the practice of simony, which is the selling of blessed items or “any exchange of spiritual things for the temporal.”
The critical element of the practice which violates Catholic teaching is not offering blessed items per se, but particularly “selling the blessing." That is, it is immoral to charge more for an item expressly because it is blessed. This would be an exchange of the spiritual for the temporal.
We Care About Souls
We do not exchange the spiritual for the temporal. In fact, the Mary Foundation not actually "sell" anything. As a non-profit charity, virtually all of our materials are available either free-of-charge or less than our cost of production and shipping. Our mission is to help people distribute tools for evangelization as inexpensively as possible. We care about the souls of the people who receive our materials.
Generous Distribution System
To prevent fraud and abuse, we do ask for a nominal donation for online orders. Typically, this is $1 per item—an amount unchanged for over three decades despite relentless inflation. We even send items with much higher production costs (such as our scapulars and crucifix) to anyone who cannot afford the recommended donation.
No Charge for Blessings
There is no charge for the blessing listed anywhere on our promotional materials or website. We do not offer unblessed items for a lower donation amount.
Common Practice in the Church
This crucial ethical distinction between the spiritual and temporal elements is actually quite common in the Church. For example, the Vatican sells rosary beads online that are blessed by the pope, but it clearly distinguishes between the sale of the rosary and the freely-given blessing.
Then there is the sale of holy water at Catholic shrines all over the world, where a financial exchange for the cost of the container and labor is required, but the holy water itself is offered free-of-charge.
The financial offerings at Mass could also appear to be an exchange of spiritual things for temporal, but the donation is not for the spiritual element (the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass), but rather for the temporal element (upkeep of the church building, feeding and housing the priest, and so on).
Better for Evangelization
As practicing Catholics, we all believe that blessed items are superior to unblessed items in the realm of grace. We are firm believers in the supernatural benefits of blessed Catholic materials, even if this reality is sometimes mistakenly considered old-fashioned or superstitious in modern times.
This is the spiritual reason why we take the time to have items blessed before we ship them, in small part as a convenience to our benefactors, but primarily as a gift to the fallen-away and lukewarm souls who will ultimately receive them. Obviously, these final recipients make no financial contribution to our organization.
Thank you for caring about this important subject, and for being a part of our work.
Our supporters have distributed tens of millions of life-changing Catholic gifts since 1991, making us America's largest producer of high-quality, super-affordable tools for evangelization. Join our work today!
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